My mildly insane idea of blogging everything modular of interest continues. Featured in this installment are a group of new modules from Intellijel, Industrial Music Electronics, and AJH Synth, as well as desktop synths (?!?) from Malekko including collaboration with Industrial Music Electronics.

I got to a few more booths today at NAMM 2016 (Malekko, The Harvestman, Sputnik, Snazzy FX, and a return to Intellijel), and wanted to share some more conversations and observations about some of the current directions in modular synthesis – both my own, and from the Meet the Makers panel on modular synthesis.

One of the primary reasons to make the move from pre-configured synthesizers to patchable modular synthesis is the ability to create your own instrument – be it to pick and choose your favorite flavors of synth building blocks, to expand it in ways you prefer, or to explore new signal paths and configurations. A common question is: Where do you start? Keeping in mind there’s no single right answer (and very few wrong ones), here are a few different approaches and their potential trade-offs.